About COPAA: Minutes of the Annual COPAA Meetings

March 31st, 2011, Seattle, Washington

Prepared by Nancy Romero-Daza, COPAA Co-Chair

The Consortium of Applied and Practicing Anthropology Programs (COPAA) held its annual business meeting during the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) annual conference held in Seattle Washington, on March 31st, 2011 from 12:00 noon to 1:20 p.m. The following representatives were present:

Order of Business

1. Introduction and Welcome by Lisa Henry, COPAA Co-Chair and introduction by participants.

2. Report from COPAA Co-Chair, Lisa Henry

• Lisa provided a brief report on the leadership transition that happened over the previous year. Lisa, Sunil, and Nancy have taken over as co-chairs and have worked under Linda Bennett’s guidance and advice. The three have divided the leadership responsibilities equally, and conduct monthly phone conferences for coordination of activities.

• Lisa reminded participants about the COPAA sponsored sessions to be held during the annual SfAA meetings: 1. “Strategies in Developing Successful Graduate Programs in Applied Anthropology”, organized by Kerry Feldman (U Alaska, Anchorage) and Lisa Henry (U North Texas). 2. “Putting the “Best Foot Forward”: Promoting Applied Anthropology for Tenure and Promotion”, organized by Linda Bennett (Memphis) and Sunil Khanna (Oregon State). 3. “Becoming an Applied Anthropologist: Diverse Training Models With a Common Goal”, organized by graduate student Jamie Petts (Oregon State) and Nancy Romero-Daza, (U South Florida) and 4. “Pushing Anthropology into the Real World: An Exhibition of UNT Applied Anthropology Client Projects” organized by Jocelyn Huelsman (U North Texas). In addition, there was COPAPIA-sponsored session “Bringing Practice into Your Department: Obstacles and Opportunities” organized by Elizabeth Briody (Cultural Keys) and Riall Nolan (Purdue U). Unfortunately two of these sessions (number 1 and number 3) were scheduled at exactly the same time on Friday, from 8 to 9:50, despite a request from the Co-Chairs to SfAA to please avoid COPAA-sponsored sessions scheduled for the same time slot. The session on “becoming and applied anthropologist” is being podcasted.

• At the beginning of the calendar year, COPAA had a balance of $7,834.46, after receiving a $100 deposit for dues from one member department and spending $ 526.05 for the AAA Expo Reception, the end balance as of February 28, 2011 was $7,408.41

• The COPAA Co-Treasures would like to transfer the account to CHASE or Bank of America or a similar bank with national reach so that the leadership group can have easier access to the funds.

4. COPAA Webmaster Report (Lisa Henry, for Christina Wasson)

• Throughout the year there will be two opportunities to update the website (in the fall and the spring). In addition, there will be a comprehensive review of the entire website once a year in the fall to make sure that everything is on track and that the departmental links and information are up to date. Departmental representatives will be contacted by email to see if there is a need for changes to their listing.

5. Visiting Fellow Program (Sunil Khanna)

• Sunil reported that there were two proposals for the 2011 VFP, one from the University of North Texas and one from the University of Memphis. Both of them were very strong and it was a hard decision for the committee (Sunil Khanna, Sherri Briller, Nancy Romero-Daza, Judith Freidenberg, and Kathryn Kozaitis). In the end, the committee voted to award the $2,000 VFP fellowship to the University of Memphis to invite Jean (Jay) Schensul from the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, CT, to participate in a three-day workshop that will coincide with the 35th anniversary of the MA program in Applied Anthropology and the university centennial celebration.

• Sherri Briller suggested that the committee encourage UNT to resubmit its application for next year (or to consider an automatic inclusion of the proposal).

• Nancy brought up the need to stress that the departments who are awarded the VFP must submit a final report to COPAA. It was agreed that the letter of award will include a stipulation to this respect.

• Another participant proposed that a small portion of the funds should be retained and only released upon submission of the final report. No decision was taken regarding this suggestion. The successful VFP proposals will be published on the COPAA website.

• Sunil also proposed a reduction in the number of committee members from 6 to 3. Ruthbeth suggested that a department who receives the award should be part of the committee the following year (since they will not be eligible to receive the award for a couple of years).

• It was decided the committee will have three members: One of the COPAA Co-Chairs, a practitioner, and the immediate past recipient of the VFP award.

6. Co-Chair Replacement

• Sunil Khanna has recently become the Associate Provost for International Programs at Oregon State University. This is a wonderful achievement and we congratulate Sunil and wish him the best. However, because of the demands of his new position Sunil cannot continue servings as Co-Chair. Susan Hyatt graciously volunteered to take Sunil’s place.

• The following should be the Co-Chair rotation:

Sunil (1 yr)

2010-2011

Nancy (3 yrs)

2010-2013

Lisa (4 yrs)

2010-2014

Susan Hyatt (4 yrs)

2011-2015

7. Practitioner Advisory Board (Lisa Henry)

• The Co-Chairs decided there is a need to identify a new practitioner to add to the Practitioner Advisory Board since Sue Squires has moved into an academic position. The Co-Chairs would like Sue to continue serving since her advice from a practitioner’s viewpoint is still valuable to the organization. Some suggestions included Jim Carey (from the CDC), Crysta Metcalf (Motorola), Barbara Johnson, and Courtney Spillane (USF alumna) as a junior practitioner. The Co-Chairs will follow up.

8. New Department Members (Lisa Henry)

Some of the suggestions included:

• California State University at Fresno, which houses the Institute of Public Anthropology
• UMass, Amherst, with the Center for Heritage and Society

9. Tenure and Promotion Initiative with CoPAPIA (Linda Bennett)

• Linda provided a report on the ongoing collaboration with CoPAPIA, including a very successful session during the AAAs in November and the creation of a document that will be further discussed in the Tenure and Promotion session organized by COPAA for the 2011 SfAAs. Once the document is finalized, it will be sent to the AAA Executive Board hopefully very soon. This is the latest in many products that have resulted from COPAA’s efforts to address issues of Tenure and Promotion throughout the years with the goal of encouraging departments to develop and implement guidelines to evaluate applied work.

10. Berghahn Publishers – LATISS journal (Lisa Henry)

• Berghahn Publishers is promoting LATISS (Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences). It was presented as a potential venue for publications for our research. The latest issue was edited by Susan Hyatt.

11. CoPAPIA presentation (Elizabeth Briody)

• Elizabeth gave a 15 minute presentation about the work CoPAPIA has done as part of an initiative to collect and analyze survey and qualitative data from faculty members, current graduate students, and alumni of different applied programs to look at how such programs have prepared students for the job market. The presentation is available from Elizabeth.

12. COPAA By-Laws (Lisa Henry)

• Lisa presented a draft of the By-Laws for COPAA and encouraged members to read them carefully and provide feedback regarding both substantive issues as well as the language of the document.

13. Other issues

• Sherri Briller suggested the need to include a student representative as part of COPAA. A discussion followed about strategies to fund such initiative, since the student would require travel funds to attend the SfAAs. It was suggested that a matching-fund program be established between COPAA and the student’s department. Another suggestion was to ask department members if they would agree to let COPAA use $10 out of the $100 dues fee for student support. Another suggestion was to increase the annual dues to $110 and use the extra $10 per year for student travel. The Co-Chairs will follow up.